Incumbent Cronin wins race for selectmen seat in Dighton

Goulart, who said she decided less than a month ago to run as a write-in, or sticker candidate, for selectman, lost by 53 votes to the current chairman, Dean V. Cronin.

Before the ballots had been tallied, Cronin, 65, said he wasn’t taking anything for granted.

“There’s no way of predicting this one,” he said.

After it was confirmed he’d won another three-year term, Cronin gave Goulart and her supporters credit for mounting an aggressive campaign.

“They came on strong in the afternoon. Now I can go back to my overloaded and overcrowded plate of things to do,” he joked.

Town Clerk Susan Medeiros said it took longer than usual to count ballots this year in part because of the number of write-in candidates which, including Goulart, totaled three.

Goulart, who served on the Board of Selectmen from 2007 to 2010 before losing in 2011 and 2012, said she would have been honored to serve again if elected.

Being a write-in candidate, she said, took a lot of the pressure off mounting a traditional campaign where a candidate takes out papers and actively campaigns. “I didn’t have to spend a nickel,” she said.

Goulart, who serves on the town’s Finance Committee, said she was taken by surprise when residents twice approached her about running as a write-in candidate.

A total of 817 of approximately 4,700 registered voters turned out for Saturday’s election. Medeiros said that’s been about the average in recent elections.

“That’s not such a good turnout when you consider we have almost 4,800 voters,” she said.

Voters approved three ballot questions for a debt exclusion, where the town would pay 48 percent and the state 52 percent of the cost of roof repairs for the town’s elementary and middle schools and Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School.